Hypothetically speaking; Would KBR be liable if….
I’ll bet there is not one current or former KBR employee who does not know of at least one KBR LOGCAP manager who has committed some sort of crime or contract violation. Many have never been punished. Crimes can vary from basic General Order 1 (GO1) violations such as drinking alcohol on base, having sexual relationships with subordinates, subcontract workers or the client, or TIPs violations such as soliciting prostitution on base, in Dubai, Thailand or the Philippines etc. Then there are the crimes of fraud, theft, bribery, assault, sexual assault, harassment and discrimination. These managers were not charged or prosecuted for contract violations and crimes primarily because they were never reported to the client. I doubt seriously it was even reported to Houston. A few lower level managers and non managers have been convicted of crimes. That must have clearly been accidental on the part of the DoD.
Not only were these managers not prosecuted. They were not fired. They were either transferred around until they quit or were asked to resign. “What’s the problem with that?” you ask. Their resume is a lie. Their new hiring company has no idea what happened at KBR and now these managers take those undesirable behavior patterns and management styles to their new company. And then they surround themselves with their cohorts in crime. No charges were filed, so security clearances are granted without a problem.
According to Wikipedia, Negligence in hiring and retention encompasses several causes of action in tort law which arise where an employer is held liable for the tortious acts of an employee because that employer was negligent in providing the employee with the ability to engage in a particular act. Four basic causes of action may arise from such a scenario: negligent hiring, negligent retention, negligent supervision and negligent training. While negligence in employment may overlap with negligent entrustment and vicarious liability, the concepts are distinct grounds of liability.
Here are a few hypothetical scenarios that may or may not be based on actual or alleged facts.
Hypothetical Scenario #1: Say a KBR Project Manager was found to be misappropriating government funds, seriously harassing and discriminating against employees and violating other GO1 items. He was not fired, instead he was allowed to resign. If he goes to work for another LOGCAP contractor and runs that project into the ground or commits acts of discrimination or harassment is KBR liable to the victim(s), the client or the new company?
Hypothetical Scenario #2: Say a KBR employee assaulted a co-worker (aka his girlfriend) and was then promoted to manager and transferred to another camp. He then used his position to access keys to female living quarters where he allegedly assaulted several different females. He was never fired. If he were hired by another LOGCAP contractor, say in Afghanistan and he assaulted another female, would KBR be liable to the victim(s), the client or the new company?
Hypothetical Scenario #3: Say a KBR Deputy Project Manger owned/co-owned a brothel in Thailand and was using his position with KBR to solicit clients for said brothel. He is then transferred to Dubai where he brings in Thai women and sets up a brothel for KBR employees there. He was was not fired or reprimanded he was put in charge of another department. He then goes to work for another DoD contractor in Iraq. If this manager sets up a brothel at the camp where he is currently employed and is caught and that contractor is somehow reprimanded, is KBR liable?
Hypothetical Scenario #4: Say a KBR General Foreman working in Iraq is an admitted pedophile and goes to Thailand on nearly every R&R just for that purpose. While working in Iraq, he is caught by the military with a young local girl. While KBR is “investigating” the incident and before he can be fired he resigns and the military commander bans him from the location. He goes to work for another contractor at the same location in Iraq. The military finds out about it and contacts the new employer. The employer terminates this pedophile. KBR hires him back and puts him at a different location. Would KBR be liable to the victim(s) of this pedophile from this point on?
If you have any hypothetical situations you would like to share…feel free.
Ms Sparky
Saturday, January 16th 2010 at 10:32 am |
Hypothetically speaking my ass!! I know for a fact I worked with at least one of those guys!!
Monday, January 18th 2010 at 5:45 am |
Hello Ms. Sparky, et al.
This is my first post in your blog, which I have followed with interest for quite some time.
A little of my background – my first LogCap contract was with the old Brown & Root in Bosnia, 1996. My next LogCap contract was with KBR when I deployed to Kuwait in February of 2003 as one of the first 12 outside-the-wire Heavy Truck Drivers. As I’m sure you, and many of your readers know, that was before the start of the war, and when I got there, there were no trucks, trailers, or tankers, and then as the kick-off the war came closer, they said, “Oh sh1t – we need some trucks to haul all this crap with!” Thus began a mad-scramble to acquire trucks and trailers, and let me tell you – it was fugly. I’ll only use first names to protect the innocent in this discourse, and it was a fellow by the name of Earl who was tasked with taking a rag-tag band of TCN’s going down to the Saudi border to escort back up to Arifjan the singularly most FUBAR’ed excuse for trucks and trailers I have ever had the misfortune to see in my entire perfeshnal truck drivin’ life. So anyway, Earl n’ them started showing up at the gate with these SNAFU’ed hunka junk excuse for trucks and trailers, where me and another guy by the name of Robbie had been tasked with “inspecting” them just outside the gate, because once they rolled through the ECP, they were our baby. What a joke. We took one look at ‘em, and just threw the d@mn inspection sheet in the dirt, figuring that if they ran and could roll, we could get to the minor issues like brakes and lights later, but right now we had a war to run, so in they rolled. I opened the side box on one of the flats, and really wasn’t all that surprised to see a chicken nest with the eggs still in it!
Anyway, to make a long story even longer, I wound-up being KBR’s first convoy commander back when there were no Qualcom’s (drivers call them *QUAIL*coms – go figure) and no radios, but I had been up at the head-shed one evening when I saw a line forming up, so I got in it, because I’d been there long enough to learn they might be giving something away that you could use. Sure enough, I got a company issued mobile phone, and as soon as they found out I had one, AND a charger I had one of the IT guys MacGyver’ed-up so I could plug it into the cigarette lighter, well the powers-that-be said, “Hey driver – you got a way of gettin’ in touch with the rear…congratulations…you’re now a Convoy Commander”. Back then as many of you know, there wasn’t any CC school, so when it would time to make a run, I’d just say, “Kick the tires, and light the fires boys, we’re goin’ tractor-trailer truckin’.” I’d usually follow that up with “Keep it tight, and try to keep up.” Krazy days.
Now I said all that to say this about the topic to which I am replying…I managed to keep my education going, and eventually got into HR. Imagine that. Alright – I’m going to land this airplane now…one of the position’s I worked in, was in the HR file room of Anaconda (which anybody who’s been around for any length of time knows is the Washington D.C. of Iraq), and I got to see all the dirt on EVERYBODY. And let me tell you…just when I thought I’d seen it all, somebody would take stupidity to an entirely new level redefining idiotic. I couldn’t believe the stuff I saw!
So, yeah…supervisors and managers were not immune to knuckleheadedness, and at times seemed to throw-down the gauntlet and set the standard! Can we talk? Details? You say you want details? Oh, I can talk about details. In fact, I got so good at reading verbal, written and termination counselings, I could analyze and determine which appeals were going to fly and which were not. Don’t tell anybody, but word got around with a couple of close associates that if you got wrote up and wanted to submit a rebuttal that actually stood a chance of a snowball in hell of getting your counseling reversed, I was the man to see, ’cause I had lot’s and lot’s of time to read and knew how to present a line of reasoning in such a way as to make them scratch their head and say, “Huh? Since when did this guy ever learn to put one word in front of another??”, and would actually get some counselings reduced or completely reversed. So, can we talk? Oh yeah, I’ve got this dandy little website you and some of your readers may be interested in, especially the one’s who haven’t been able to get the time of day from any of the recruiters. Them, and the folks who demobed or got fired and want to try to get back onto the project with one of the contractors who have actually been awarded a Task Order, as opposed to the three letter contractors that haven’t if you know what I mean. Oh yeah! And did I happen to mention I just got out of Afghanistan a couple of weeks ago from working as a recruiter for one of the “other guys” over there? Sure did! Let’s just say I’ve got the lowdown on what’s going on in the ‘stan right now. Hey! Ive got an idea…let’s totally get together and talk sometime!
I don’t know if you can include the name of my site but if you can here it is…it’s http://www.logcap4jobs.com
Keep up the good fight Ms. Sparky – you’re doing a fine job.
Monday, January 18th 2010 at 6:27 am |
You’re a great writer. You should think about being a guest writer on MsSparky.com. Thanks for the comment and thanks for being a driver in Iraq. That is probably the single most difficult dangerous job over there. A close second to being a soldier in direct combat.
I have been to your site a few times. First of all I’m a die hard capitalist. I believe a fair price should be received for a quality product. So the fact that you charge for you services is not a problem. Your prices seem to be reasonable and you do state up front that “you make no guarantees of work”. There are many many scammers out there who taking advantage of desperate people and proving nothing but heartache. I am very protective of my readers and before I can refer them to anyone, for anything, whether they charge or not, I always check them out.
Here’s what I didn’t find on your site…Who in the hell are you? You are asking for money but don’t disclose who you are by name. Why? Your web address is registered as “private” so there is no information about the registrant publicly available and your comment was left from an your IP address most likely out of out of Iraq.
Before I can refer anyone to your site, I have to know who you are.
Monday, January 18th 2010 at 8:03 am |
The cat’s out of the bag! When I started my site, I was still working for KBR, and had to conceal my identity lest the powers that be tried to stick it to me for “conflict of interest”. THEN I demobed from KBR and went to work for Fluor in Afghanistan, where again, I had to keep my real identity a secret and conduct my business clandestinely. There were indicators that I had been discovered, and one in particular that was actually kind of comical, because when I first got there, I could access my web mail with no problem, but somebody somewhere got a clue that I was running a business enterprise on the side, so IT blocked the portal to my web mail. Oh, it gets better…THEN one of the department managers started making subtle remarks to me, like once when he was going around the room with coffee offering to top people off, asked if I’d like some more, and when I said “I’m good”, before I could barely even get the words out of my mouth, he IMMEDIATELY and with this big, knowing smile shot back, “Oh,you sure are!” He knew! I knew that he knew, and he knew that I knew, but there wasn’t anything management could do about it, because my site is as you (being the steely-eyed missile woman you obviously are) so astutely observed through your superior powers of logic and deduction, PRIVATE! It is hosted by a proxy! There! I’ve said it! And they can’t fire me for running my site anymore, because you know what? I QUIT! Can you hear me all the way over in Greenville and Afghanistan???
Now I can tell the whole world without fear of retaliation, or retribution that this is me! Bruce Diggs with 2 g’s! Long-time former KBR and fresh from a deep, deep undercover fact-finding mission in Afghanistan as a HR transition team recruiter of Fluor in disguise, and tireless defender of Truth, Justice, and the American way, saying, “FAGETABOUTIT!
And like Harry Truman so deftly put it, “I’M MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GONNA TAKE IT ANYMORE!”
GOD this is liberating! I feel just like Jim Carrey in “Fun With Dick and Jane”!
THANK YOU Ms. Sparky, for giving me that gentle nudge I needed! http://www.logcap4jobs.com
P.S. I would LOVE to be one of your guest writers, as I do enjoy writing, and I’ve got allot to say!
P.P.S I will definitely be working on implementing changes to my site to reflect who I am, and what my background is!
Monday, January 18th 2010 at 8:17 am |
Logmaster,
I am sure that victims and their attorneys would be helped greatly with your information and knowledge of how HR really handled things.
Monday, January 18th 2010 at 8:48 am |
Gentle nudge?? I must be off my mark this morning. I was going for a “Kick in the butt”!
Get those changes made and give me some time to check you out and we can exchange links. Shoot me an email and we can talk more about this and Guest Posting. It will be good for your site. Good people need jobs and our soldiers need good people to take care of them…regardless of who the contractor is.
Monday, January 18th 2010 at 5:29 pm |
Oh boy i guess Fluor is getting ready to get roasted turn him loose deb
Monday, January 18th 2010 at 6:13 pm |
A fresh voice within the mix, would no doubt help a few of those understand the process and limits of their own expertise.
Monday, January 18th 2010 at 8:12 pm |
Just need to “vet” him first and then he is welcome to share his personal experiences and insights.
Tuesday, January 19th 2010 at 11:35 pm |
Hey there Ms Sparky! Just wanted to let you know I’ve been addressing those earlier discussed changes to my site, and shot you an email about it a few minutes ago.
Wednesday, January 20th 2010 at 4:05 am |
Whois now reflects my information publicly!
Tuesday, March 8th 2011 at 4:26 am |
4 years working in Iraq for KBR as Electrician, escorting TCNs truckers, each time going thru xray machines to pass security(several times a day). as a labor foreman did many trips to the burn yard dumping trash. got sick, was sent home and immediatly got diagnosed with cancer.